Friday, May 8, 2015

Final Update on “Something Ugly This Way Comes”

Final clarification from the patient representative at Good
Samaritan’s in Lafayette, CO, came in a phone call yesterday. It seems that while the Little Sister of
Ya-da-ya-da stand firm on their refusal to provide reproductive choice and
care, they are “fully in support of advanced directives and sane end of life options.” It is my cynical and well informed opinion
that they are more likely “fully in support of” Medicare and ACA funding.

Be that as it may be, there is no insurance lobby to bring
pressure on behalf of women and men in childbearing years to assert their
rights to birth control and other forms of family planning. There certainly is no pressure or special interest
group powerful enough or rich enough to stand up for a woman’s right to choose. Speaking of which, I once heard Chris
Matthews demand to know why women talk about choice rather than just saying
abortion. He didn’t seem to understand
the issue. Let me make it clear, as I
made it clear in an email to him. We
have always had abortion on demand in this country – we do it in hospitals now
instead of garages. De-legalize it and
we go back to the garage; back to coat hangers and knitting needles; back to
women bleeding out in piss filled alleys because they can’t get medical treatment
fast enough to save their lives. Therein
rests the choice, and more to the point anyone who thinks that their smug and
superior religious prejudices will prevent desperate women from pursuing
desperate options has a serious problem – they are fucking delusional.

No one, be they a politician or a priest, a nun or televangelist
has the legal right to tell a woman that she can’t have an abortion. Safe, medical and therapeutic abortion has
been the legal/medical standard of the land since Roe v. Wade became settled
law in January of 1973. A 7-2 majority in
the highest court in the country upheld a woman’s right to control her own body
by applying the 14th Amendment’s implied right to privacy. The only thing that can and will be done is
the limiting of access to care. Through
state’s rights and religious freedom the tenets of one religious view are being
legislated and commercialized into public policy that deprives women, of all
faiths and creeds, of the ability to control their own reproductive
processes. Thus, taking us back to the 1950’s when the
state, the church and/or the men in our lives owned our bodies, leaving us no option
but to have children until our uterus prolapsed. What you may ask of all the unwanted, poor or
starving children that result from such an arcane policy? Well, the Catholics and other denominations
have their charities which have yet, by the way, failed to solve the problems
of poverty or hunger. While most of the
politicians making these idiotic laws consider bloated corporations more
deserving of their assistance then hungry children.

So, the next time we have an election those who don’t turn
up to vote because they are lazy, apathetic or think they are proving some
obscure point by “sitting it out,” might give some thought to who the hell they
are empowering, disempowering, disenfranchising, marginalizing and even helping
to harm unto death. They might give it some
real deep thought because the rights, options and future with which they are
gambling very well could be their own.